NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

VIII. JURISDICTION 217
gress declared the Board exclusively should hear and determine in the first
instance. The contention is at war with the long settled rule of judicial administration
that no one is entitled to judicial relief for a supposed or threatened
injury until the prescribed administrative remedy has been exhausted.' * * *
The above decisions in substance closed the controversies involved
in the great wave of injunction proceedings inaugurated shortly after
the passage of the act in the effort to destroy the statutory method
provided by Congress for the orderly conduct of the work of the
Board.4 The exclusive jurisdiction of the Board to determine in
the first instance whether an employer has engaged in unfair labor
practices affecting commerce is now well settled in the law. Its
decisions, as the statute provides, are reviewable by the Circuit Courts
of Appeals, and finally by the Supreme Court on writ of certiorari.
B. THE SCOPE OF THE BOARD'S JURISDICTION TO PREVENT UNFAIR
LABOR PRACTICES
As pointed out above (p. 216) the jurisdiction of the Board to prevent
unfair labor practices is limited to unfair labor practices "affecting
commerce." 5 The first 2 years of the act's operations were
marked by a long legal contest to sustain its application in the field
laid out for it by Congress. 6 This contest reached a successful conclusion
on April 12, 1937, when the Supreme Court in National Labor
Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U. S. 1,
and four companion cases, upheld the authority of the Board not
only over operations or instrumentalities of commerce, but also over
manufacturing and production activities whenever a stoppage of such
operations by industrial strife would result in burdens and obstructions
to interstate or foreign commerce, though such operations when
separably viewed are local.
The decisions of the Supreme Court in the Labor Board Cases
decided April 12, 1937, resulted in an almost general acceptance of
the jurisdiction of the Board over manufacturing enterprises receiving
a large proportion of their raw materials from without the State
of manufacture and shipping a large proportion of their finished
products to points outside such State. Many concerns, however, misunderstanding
the principle laid down by the Supreme Court, still
contended that where the flow of commerce was in only one direction,
7 the act was inapplicable and the jurisdiction of the Board did
not apply.
On March 28, 1938, the Supreme Court, in Santa Cruz Fruit Packing
Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 303 U. S. 453, reasserted
the principles announced in the Jones & Laughlin case, and set at
rest the contention that unfair labor practices of enterprises whose
products are not part of a continuous flow of interstate commerce
are beyond the reach of congressional control under the commerce
power. In this case, the Court sustained the jurisdiction of the
3 303 U. S. 41, at 50.
For a full discussion of the Board's injunctive litigation during the present fiscal year,
see ch. IX, infra.
5 National Labor Relations Act, sec. 10. The jurisdiction is more extensive in the District
of Columbia and the Territories (sec. 2 (6)).
The history of the Board's early struggle in the courts Is considered at length in the
Second Annual Report, ch. XI, pp. 52-57.
7 In all three of the cases involving production employees decided by the Supreme Court
on April 12, 1937, the enterprises involved were manufacturing concerns receiving a substantial
proportion of their raw materials in interstate commerce and shipping a substantial
proportion of their finished products into interstate commerce,